Monday, 24 October 2016

Winston
Churchill famously said the best argument against democracy is a five minute
conversation with the average voter and his observation is no less true of
Canadian voters today than it was of British voters back then. How else can you explain the enduring popularity of Justin Trudeau without concluding the average Canadian voter is
too politically ignorant to vote and should be forced to pass a test before
they are allowed to exercise their franchise.
But listening to the pundits you’d be led to believe Canadian voters are
a well informed and politically engaged electorate but they’re giving them too
much credit. They need to hype up
Canadians’ political intellect because they need to be convinced Canadians
believe the same things they do to justify their mistaken perception of themselves
as the voice of the people. They want to
believe Canadians turned on the Conservatives because they opposed the Niqab
ban (they didn’t) and they rallied around the Liberals Syrian refugee
resettlement scheme because it was the Canadian thing to do (not true either). The real reason why Canadians
turned on the Conservatives is because they grew bored of them and wanted
something new.

A review of
the history of the popular vote in past elections reveals how unremarkable the
Liberal victory was. With just 39.5% of
the popular vote it seems pathetic compared to the Progressive Conservatives
50.03% of the popular vote back in 1984 and 43.02% of the popular vote in
1988. And this was when the deservedly
hated Brian Mulroney was party leader.
Indeed, the Liberal’s 39.5% support is slightly poorer compared to the
39.6% Stephen Harper’s Conservatives got in the previous election when the
party secured a majority. And despite
the constant muck thrown at Stephen Harper and his Conservatives by our allegedly
objective press in the run up to the election they still walked away with 31.9%
of the popular vote. They were defeated
but hardly crushed.

Reading the
press you’d think the Liberals destroyed their opposition but they didn’t. Such is the nature of our first-past-the-post
system. You can win a riding and form
the government with the majority of voters voting against you. It’s not a perfect system but a truly perfect
democratic system doesn’t exist. That
didn’t stop the Liberals from trying to give us one even though their effort
was a masked attempt to gerrymander the next election and all elections after
that.

So why did
the Liberals win? Part of it has to do
with the stupefying popularity of their vacuous party leader most of it
fabricated by a media shamelessly acting as Trudeau’s press agents and not the
adversarial fourth estate they pretend to be.
That an obvious nitwit like Justin Trudeau can ascend to the highest
office of an advanced industrialized nation speaks not only of the power of
pedigree but says a lot about the influence of media bias on the people of the nation
that put him there. These are the same
people who detest Stephen Harper but can’t exactly tell you why.

Equally so
they can’t tell you why they voted for the Liberals, or NDP for that matter,
without condemning the Conservatives because they didn’t know where the
Liberals stood on anything because the Liberals didn’t tell you where they stood on anything beyond climate change, diversity, and gender equality, the
holy trinity of fashionable social justice causes guaranteed to get you good
press. Oh and legalized pot. And middle class tax cuts that really aren’t. It was just a carryover from
Trudeau’s bid for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada where he was just as vague and noncommittal about everything
outside of climate change, diversity, and gender equality. Oh, and pot.
You can’t forget about the pot.

Ennui and
not anger is why the Conservatives lost.
The Conservatives had become familiar and boring breeding irrational
contempt in a populace whose personal lives had become equally familiar and
boring compounded by increasing insecurity and a sense of powerlessness to do
anything about it. Elections are great
in that they not only fool people into thinking that they can change their
lives, that they can overcome that sense of powerlessness, through the mere act
of voting but a change of government provides the fleeting novelty their
indebted, precarious, stagnant lives are looking for.

The “hopey,
changey” fluff of the Obama campaign is exemplary in this regard. Not only did Obama provide the illusion of
giving power to the powerless he provided the novelty of voting for America’s
first black President. But “hope” and
“change” was just “marketing pabulum” to avoid discussing important
issues. And given Justin Trudeau’s knack
for sounding stupid when he thinks he’s talking smart the borrowing of pages
from the Democrats’ campaign playbook was a sensible move, choosing to
concentrate on image more so than merit for in Justin’s case, as so for Obama,
there is plenty of the former, not much of the latter.

The Liberals will win the next election. I don’t see how they can lose but a third term is pushing it. I’m hoping by then Canadian’s would have grown tired of Justin Trudeau’s “Look at me!” antics and yearn for a real statesman, not some jet-setting wannabe world celebrity with a messiah complex who cashed in on his politically famous last name and sought the highest office in this country because he lacked both the talent and the intellect to achieve international fame any other way. I doubt very much the Liberals will do anything in power to effect positive change in the lives of Canadians (governments rarely do) but as long as they can be duped by the “hope” and “change” superficiality that is Trudeau the Lesser the longer he will remain “popular” and the Liberals in power.

Sunday, 9 October 2016

Appeal to antiquity/tradition is the position that because something worked for us in the
past we should continue to do it seemingly in perpetuity. This is problematic because it ignores the
modern context. Just because something
worked in the past doesn’t mean it’s still beneficial today.

In
immigration discussions this fallacy manifests itself as the “Canada was built
by immigration” meme. While it may be
historically factual that Canada was built by immigration it’s not an argument
for continued and ever increasing immigration in the present. This is because “current year” Canada is a
different place than the Canada of one hundred years ago. We have to take into consideration the health of the economy, immigration’s impact on the environment, its effects on
social cohesion, technology and its potential impact on the labour market,
among other things.

To
illustrate the absurdity of this argument we can perform a thought experiment where
we imagine a Canada were every space of land is occupied by an individual so
that you couldn’t take a single step in either direction without stepping on
someone’s toes. It would be insane to
continue to allow immigration in this scenario just because tradition demands
it. If the country hadn’t become an
undesirable place to live long before it got to that point it definitely will
become an undesirable place to live when it does. The country’s economy, society, and
institutions would have collapsed under such weight. I acknowledge this is an absurd example
because it’s highly unlikely the country will ever reach that point but it does
bring to light that population sizes do have their limits and immigration cannot
be spoken of independent of a myriad of other considerations solely because it
worked so well for us in the past.
Canadians cities consistently rank in the top tier of best places to
live in the world mostly because they are medium sized cities however unrestrained
immigration will undo that. These once
livable cities will become unlivable, a process already in the making for
Toronto.

If we were to remain true to the "Canada was built by immigration" meme then we would be favouring European immigration almost exclusively because it wasn’t just immigrants who built Canada. It was European Christian immigrants who did.

Monday, 3 October 2016

As if we
need more evidence to drive the point home that Canadians reject multiculturalism
the CBC reports on a CBC-Angus Reid poll that found 68% of Canadians want
minorities to “fit in” by which we mean we want more assimilation and less accommodation. Also, the underlying subtext is we want immigrants
who look more like us so we’re not overwhelmed demographically.

And there’s
nothing wrong with that. It’s completely
understandable. Some will say “that’s
racist” to which I say f*ck that! I’m
really getting tired of hearing that shit because shouting racism isn’t an argument.

This poll suggests,
to me at least, that Canadians don’t see their country as a multicultural one
and don’t want it to be one either. Those who state otherwise harbour the real marginal opinion.

And if a
referendum were held today asking Canadians if they wish to see their country
adopt multiculturalism as the driving social policy guiding the national
character they’d oppose it outright with a clear majority to erase any
confusion.

This is why
it had to be imposed upon us by our self appointed betters in government and
their enablers in the media.

It cannot
be stressed enough that multiculturalism, along with the restructuring of our
immigration system to favour immigration from non-traditional sources, was
conceived out of elite arrogance and not popular will.

Multiculturalism
and mass immigration is cultural and demographic suicide for a host society. I think Canadians have come to understand
this if they hadn’t arrived at that realization already so it shouldn’t be so
shocking to learn that, according to this CBC-Angus Reid poll, the majority of Canadians
have their objections. They know there
was nothing wrong with the old Canada and, quite frankly, would like to have it
back. The new Canada to them is just so
new Coke.